Universal Design for Learning:

A Practical Guide

Authors

Dr. Seanna Takacs, Educational Development Consultant

Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Junsong Zhang, Instructional Designer

Justice Institute of British Columbia

Acknowledgement

This project is supported by Students Services at Justice Institute of British Columbia

Recommended Citation

Takacs, S., Zhang, J (2020). Universal Design for Learning: A Practical Guide. Centre for

Teaching, Learning, and Innovation. Justice Institute of British Columbia

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Table of Contents

SECTION ONE ......................................................................................................................... 2

WHY UDL MATTERS............................................................................................................ 2

UDL: A Quick Start ................................................................................................................ 3

Opportunities & Challenges .................................................................................................. 3

Your Ideal Students ............................................................................................................... 4

SECTION TWO ......................................................................................................................... 6

User-Centred Design............................................................................................................. 6

UDL for Instructors and Students ......................................................................................... 6

Using Case Studies ............................................................................................................... 7

Design Thinking ..................................................................................................................... 7

Wallet (Re)design Activity ..................................................................................................... 8

SECTION THREE ..................................................................................................................... 9

What is UDL? ........................................................................................................................ 9

UDL Priorities ........................................................................................................................ 9

The UDL Framework ........................................................................................................... 11

Engagement ..................................................................................................................... 12

Representation ................................................................................................................ 13

Action & Expression ........................................................................................................ 14

The Overlaps ....................................................................................................................... 15

UDL Myths ........................................................................................................................... 15

UDL and Accommodation Planning .................................................................................... 16

SECTION FOUR ..................................................................................................................... 18

Case Study #1 ..................................................................................................................... 18

Case Study #2 ..................................................................................................................... 19

Resources ............................................................................................................................ 20

References ............................................................................................................................. 20

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SECTION ONE

Why UDL Matters Post-secondary instructors are facing more challenges nowadays because the student

population is increasingly diverse. Students with diverse cultural backgrounds, skills,

abilities, interests, experiences, and social-economic status require instructors to reflect on

their teaching practices and adopt user-centred approaches for course design and delivery.

But how do user-centred approaches look like in practice? And how can instructors deliver

quality learning outcomes to maximum number of students?

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a curriculum design, development, and delivery

framework that could help answer these questions. UDL seeks to include the maximum

number of learners in instruction by offering multiple paths to get to the same learning

outcomes, including

• Multiple means of engagement: the why of learning

• Multiple means of representation: the what of learning

• Multiple means of action and expression: the how of learning

UDL supports the design of inclusive and user-centred learning experiences by:

Creating Expert Learners

UDL aims to create expert learners who are purposeful, motivated, resourceful, strategic and goal-directed

Teaching to the Margins

UDL reminds instructors to think who is experiencing barriers and how to design curriculum for as many students as possible

Planning Proactively UDL advocates ways of anticipating the variability of learners in your class and gathering feedback for redesign

Enabling Access UDL looks at access in terms of how learners engage with the class environment, how they interface with the way knowledge is represented, and how they express their learning

Providing Flexibility UDL emphasizes on programming choice and flexibility to obtain learning outcomes in different ways

Explicitly Addressing Expectations

UDL advocates practices that bring implicit understanding to light so that expectations are clear, concrete, and actionable

Frequent and Varied Assessment

UDL advocates frequent, varied, low-stakes assessment for engagement and regular feedback

You will learn more about UDL and how it could reshape your course design and delivery

through this guide.

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UDL: A Quick Start UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning.

UDL is a framework for designing curriculum. It can also be thought of as a disposition or

lens that you can take on creating inclusive learning activities.

UDL seeks to include the maximum number of learners in instruction by offering multiple

paths to get to the same learning outcomes.

By designing for choice and flexibility in activities, UDL supports learner engagement with

the goal of creating expert learners. Expert learners are well-acquainted with their

strengths and weaknesses. They know how they learn best, and they know when to ask for

help. Expert learners are able to identify why they have been successful, why they might be

struggling, and how to make changes.

Instructors who design activities and curriculum according to UDL principles build in

methods not only for conveying content knowledge, but in developing students who have

the ability to reflect on their learning preferences and goals.

UDL uses components of design thinking: using empathy to understand learner needs and

goals, identifying gaps, working iteratively, and using feedback for steadily improving

response. Maintaining a process-orientation and attitude of steady improvement is a key

aspect of UDL.

Opportunities & Challenges Your best first step into UDL work is a thinking step.

Before getting to any planning, design, organizing, or writing, take some time to consider

the next course you’re teaching, the activity you’re trying to plan, or the project you are

trying to support.

You have an opportunity to create and translate knowledge and skills using Universal

Design for Learning framework. To move into this framework, start with questions.

• What are your beliefs about learning?

• What would make you feel that you did a good job as an instructor?

• What are you carrying forward from past courses or experiences that will colour your

teaching?

• What barriers or difficulties do you anticipate for yourself and for your students?

• How can you work together to achieve learning experiences that you want to carry

forward and build upon?

Universal Design for Learning can feel like a 180 degree turn for instructors because it asks

us to turn some of our thinking on its head. It asks us to plan for more assessment, to think

about engagement as something beyond motivation, to get more student feedback, and to

think about finding multiple routes to learning outcomes. UDL asks us to re-evaluate our

historical educational conventions and in many cases, asks us to reflect upon our own

educational journeys. Did it have to be that way? Does it have to continue to be?

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The guide that follows will address questions about learning outcomes, workload,

accommodation plans, classroom diversity, and preparedness. This guide will equip you

with the UDL framework and multiple ways of entering that framework. While some of the

ideas in UDL seem intuitive, they have a depth to them that is best constructed

collaboratively. As you feel your assumptions about diversity, teaching, inclusion, and

learning challenged, it is helpful to bounce ideas around. While this guide is designed to

help you create some concrete guideposts and ways to get started on UDL, working with

different people with different voices and experiences will further those exercises and

stretch you towards becoming the type of UDL practitioner you seek to be.

Your Ideal Students When we are designing curriculum or creating learning activities, a good instructor will

imagine their audience or their ideal student. The ideal student is not perfect but instead

tends to be a prototype of what we might expect to see in terms of strengths and

weaknesses, preferences, motivation, and knowledge base. These assumptions set up a

mental model of what the experience with our students will likely look and feel like. So

where does the ideal student image come from? It comes largely from our previous

teaching experiences, but also from the way we felt as students, and how we were treated

by our own parents, teachers, and instructors.

Based on our ideal student image, we imagine how our activities, assessment, and

feedback will be designed. Being thoughtful and empathetic, accounting for experience, and

connecting with our own and our students’ histories is a key aspect of teaching, but

sometimes activities don’t work as we expect. Perhaps nobody talks during group activities,

a small group of students need information repeated multiple times, your inbox is full of

questions you thought you addressed, or only half the class seemed to do the readings.

These difficulties present an opportunity to think about whether our ideal student mental

model is accurate and whether we can design differently.

One of the cornerstones of Universal Design for Learning is to consider the variation in

experiences and characteristics in students in your classes. The jaggedness principle

(Rose, 2016) holds that learners vary in many ways, along many different dimensions. Your

students will vary in:

• Information processing

• Language processing

• Introversion and extroversion

• Financial resources

• Post-secondary readiness

• Self-advocacy

• Spatial ability

• Reading speed

• Mathematical calculations

When we practice taking into account the jaggedness in our classes, we don’t change the

jaggedness itself, but we change the ways we expect variation and in turn, we get better in

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planning for that variation. As we get better at anticipating jaggedness, we start feeling less

surprised and in turn, we get better at planning proactively. Better proactive planning means

less reactivity and less stress for both you AND learners.

describe who doesn’t fit into

“your ideal students” here

describe your ideal students

here

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SECTION TWO

User-Centred Design It is extremely important to keep the users in your mind when it comes to accounting for

jaggedness and designing proactively in a UDL framework. UDL is user-centred because it

is critical to understand the needs, gaps, barriers, and goals that any users may

experience, which includes both the instructors and students.

But why is UDL for both of the students AND for you as the instructor? Because classrooms

are systems. They are ecologies. Everyone, including you, is using the design that you

created so we want to be sure that users on both sides of the design are getting their gaps

filled, their goals met, and are leaving with a sense of satisfaction in teaching, learning, and

reflection.

UDL for Instructors and Students Universal Design for Learning is student-focused and also instructor-focused, because UDL

is a curriculum design, development, and delivery framework that focuses on creating

expert learners. Learners do not exist alone in a classroom. Classroom ecology is a

network of students and instructors who are imbedded in that design. Strong curriculum

design should account for student experience and instructor experience, the interactions

between student and instructor, and how the design supports a rewarding and engaging

learning climate.

One of the most important changes you may experience in working through the UDL

framework is the idea of creating expert learners. Often, our goal as instructors is to help

students become experts in the content we are teaching. But expert learners are not

content experts. They are experts in understanding how they learn, under what conditions

they learn, what their preferences are, where they are likely to fail, who they should team up

with, and when to ask for help. This can mean that you are teaching expert learners who

still fail your class and know exactly why they failed. Likewise, you can have inexpert

learners who do well in your class and have no idea why!

Designing for expert learners means that your design should have explicit learning

outcomes and expectations so that students have defined goalposts. These goalposts help

them gauge how readily they are learning the content and what types of changes they

should seek out to improve their performance.

When learning outcomes and expectations are not explicit, you may notice that students

• Are unwilling to ask questions or ask superficial questions

• Are unwilling to take chances

• Do not participate in class discussions

• Argue over grades and deadlines

• Say “I’m not sure what you’re looking for”

• May attribute their success or failure to luck

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The UDL framework is student-centred insofar as it helps us investigate these threats to

engagement. It encourages us to empathize with the student experience, assess

engagement and background knowledge, solicit feedback not only on the content and its

accessibility, and offers multiple paths to engagement, learning, and demonstrating

knowledge. We can only start developing expert learners if students are aware of what

they are meant to learn.

Using Case Studies It is important to acknowledge that case studies are important to learn how to mobilize UDL

principles by knowing what we are looking for in a situation. They help us understand how

the theory we are learning shows up in real life and helps us learn to generalise our

knowledge into what we might expect to see in the classroom.

Universal Design for Learning is about taking a stance of curiosity about the situation or

problem, analysing the problem into pieces, parsing out the meaning, and translating it into

action or intervention. We have to acknowledge and understand our own sense of meaning

and our own biases. When we are confronted by an unexpected teaching problem or

learning that doesn’t proceed along the course we expected, UDL provides us some

heuristic or procedure that we can follow to figure out what to do next.

In the exercises on UDL that follow, an important piece of the puzzle will be the learning

disposition you take even before you start looking at the problem. In the same way as you

thought about your ideal student, accounted for jaggedness, and developed a user-centred

approach. When you are reading the case studies, try to:

• Think about how you feel and how you would approach the case studies

• Jot down some of these ideas as you’re reading through and connect them to what

you’re already doing.

This process will help you tune into the beliefs you hold about your skills and abilities as

you are about to embark on learning about UDL.

Design Thinking While UDL provides a framework for you to identify areas for improvement, Design Thinking

offers a human-centred approach for problem-solving. Applying Design Thinking

methodology will help you design and implement user-centred solutions in your classroom.

According to Institute of Design at Stanford University (2018), there are five stages of

design thinking process: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. To begin with,

here is a very brief introduction to each stage:

• Empathise: The first stage is to gain an understanding of how your users think,

behave, and feel. Empathizing with people requires you to gather information and

develop knowledge about users’ experience, motivation, and needs. Common

methods include interview, observation, and/or immerse yourself in the environment.

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• Define: The second stage is to analyse your findings and synthesise them to define

problems. In fact, you may be able to identify multiple problems in the define stage,

but it is critical to identify and prioritize THE PROBLEM you want to start with.

• Ideate: At this stage you start brainstorming solutions to the problem statement

you’ve identified. It is beneficial to work as a team so your solution takes different

perspectives. Also, visualizing your solutions through simple sketch is an effective

strategy to communicate your ideas.

• Prototype: Prototyping means making your ideas tactile in a way that is inexpensive

and rapid. Most people use the term low-fidelity during this stage to emphasize the

simple and low-cost nature of the prototype. Prototyping could still be difficult

because it usually requires a team effort.

• Test: This is the stage where you conduct user testing and gather data for

improvement. Design thinking process is iterative and the results generated during

the user testing are often used to inform how people think, behave, and feel.

The Design thinking process allows you to gather information from your students such as

their background knowledge and learning preferences, identify areas of improvement,

design new solutions, and gather feedback through testing iteratively.

In the case studies in this workbook, you will apply the five stages of design thinking to

identify areas for improvement based on the UDL framework.

Wallet (Re)design Activity Mastering Design Thinking requires extensive practices. In our workshops, we adapted and

simplified the Wallet Design Project from Stanford School of Design for you to practice the

five stages of Design Thinking.

However, this activity works the best when you collaborate other participants and co-create

solutions to improve your design.

If you are reading this guide by yourself, you may find a partner to work with you or contact

Centre for Teaching, Learning and Innovation for consultation.

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SECTION THREE

What is UDL? Universal Design for Learning is a curriculum design, development, and delivery framework.

It was created to support the accessibility of course content and materials and to sustain

the development of expert learners. It grew out of the concept of Universal Design (UD)

which was applied to physical spaces (Goldsmith, 1963) to make them spacious,

accessible, navigable, and flexible in their use. In the same way that fully enclosed

bathroom stalls containing a toilet, sink, and shelf can support wheelchair use, room for

potty-training toddlers, privacy, quiet spaces for the introverted, and a place anyone can put

most stuff so it doesn’t fall in the toilet, the L in UDL seeks to apply the same flexibility to

the learning environment.

UDL has been developed from research on:

• Reading and Language Acquisition

• Expertise

• Social Learning Theory

• Motivation

• Higher Order Thinking

• Deep Learning

• Metacognition

According to SET-BC, an adopter of UDL in K-12, “UDL provides a framework for

addressing the diversity of learners in our classrooms. Rather than individually adapting for

each student’s needs, teachers create student-focused environments by designing

curriculum that is accessible to a wide range of learners. This systematic approach

removes learning barriers by clarifying learning intentions and providing flexible instructional

environments.”

UDL Priorities Teaching to the Margins

What are the margins? The margins refer to those teaching and learning places that lie

outside an ideal student or what our education system is built to work with. UDL grew out of

a movement to include students with learning disabilities who had traditionally been

excluded from school. Teaching to the margins means we are mindful of who is

experiencing barriers and how to design curriculum for inclusion of as many students as

possible.

Creating Expert Learners

According to CAST guidelines, an expert learner is a learner who is purposeful, motivated,

resourceful, knowledgeable, strategic and goal-directed. Expert learners know what they do

not know and are good at seeking help. They have a sense of their goals and objectives

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and are able to map out and monitor the course to getting there. If they succeed or fail, they

are able to attribute their success or failure to their persistence, strategy use, learning

preferences, and sense of engagement.

Planning Proactively

UDL emphasizes being proactive rather than reactive in educational planning. This includes

developing ways of anticipating the kinds of learners you are likely to encounter in your

classes, planning for flexibility, and gathering feedback from the very beginning. Being

proactive means that as an instructor, you become skilled at understanding and addressing

diversity in your classroom instead of being surprised and planning as the need arises, with

ad hoc solutions.

Enabling Access

UDL also grew out of the Universal Design movement which sought to design the built

environment (stairs, bathrooms, hallways, cafeterias) so that they could be used and

accessed by people with a diversity of access needs. The L for Learning part was added to

bring the same spirit of designing for inclusion to the educational environment. UDL looks at

access in terms of how learners engage with the class environment, how they interface with

the way knowledge is represented and how they express their learning. Access is the basic

starting point in the UDL framework.

Providing Flexibility in Getting to Learning Outcomes

A priority for UDL work is designing for choice and flexibility in working towards learning

outcomes. In a UDL-guided curriculum, learning outcomes are specific, explicit, and have a

direct line to learning activities. Unlike a modified curriculum where learning outcomes can

be narrowed or changed outright, UDL prioritizes maintaining learning outcomes and

programming choice and flexibility to get to the outcome in different ways.

Explicitly Addressing Expectations and Structure

If learners are to find multiple routes to the same learning outcomes, it is crucial to be

explicit, transparent, and concrete around the course structure, learning outcomes,

assignments, tests, and exams. For example, do you hope that students will find your

course transformative? What are some concrete markers of transformation? Do you want

students to be able to readily apply theory to practice? What are the steps in that

application so that both you and students can know when they have been successful?

When we are experts and have taught for a number of years, our understanding becomes

increasingly implicit. UDL advocates practices that bring those implicit understandings to

light and designing curriculum and activities so that expectations are clear, concrete, and

actionable.

Frequent, Varied Assessment

An important part of the UDL framework is frequent, varied, low-stakes assessment. UDL

advocates offering formative assessment of engagement and prior knowledge so that

students have a sense of where they are starting, a crucial line that will help them

understand overall goal structure in the course. Regular, low-stakes assessment gives

students regular feedback which will help them understand not only whether they are on

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track, but how they might be steering the wrong way, and how to get back on track.

Frequent, varied assessment helps students not only build a grade, but to map and chart

their course from start to finish.

How might these priorities change your teaching practices? Jot down your thoughts here.

The UDL Framework The Universal Design for Learning framework is grounded in three cognitive networks:

affective, recognition, strategic. Each of these three networks uses a principle which can in

turn be used to guide design and practice.

Before you move on, please go through the UDL Guidelines and identify some key pieces

to help begin your journey in navigating the UDL framework:

• Brain networks

• Connection to learning

• Goal

• Expert learner

• Access

• Internalize

In the following content, we will explain Engagement, Representation, and Action &

Expression separately and provide you with some actionable ideas.

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Engagement Engagement is part of the Affective Network and is concerned with the WHY of learning.

Research into motivation and affect has shown dramatically that there is diversity in the

ways different learners are motivated. Learners hold different experiences, different subject-

area knowledge, have different goals for learning and for class participation, different

interests, passions, and abilities. Some learners crave and enjoy novelty while others prefer

routine. Some students enjoy gathering details and stories and building to a concept; others

prefer to learn the theory first and understand how it unfolds in real-life second. Some

students prefer to think and work alone; others prefer to work in a group; some even prefer

a hybrid.

All of these variables taken together mean that if you are planning on a way to “hook”

students or hold their interest, you will have to be sure to design for MULTIPLE means of

engagement so that everyone gets to jump into the class in ways that not only feel safe, but

stimulating and enriching.

Offering choices for engagement is a key aspect of UDL. Assessing and getting feedback

on engagement as a beginning, middle, and end step are essential aspects of the design

process.

Here are three ideas for supporting multiple means of engagement:

1. At the beginning of the course or class, ask students to write down or share how

the learning outcomes or content is supporting their goals for their program or degree;

2. At the end of class do a hotwash. Reserve the last ten minutes of class for students to summarize the main points of the class and suggest one change that could be made for the next class. The instructor is strictly a notetaker at this stage. For the next class, the instructor starts the class by summarizing the feedback from the last class to frame the next class;

3. Have students interview each other on a list of academic strengths and weaknesses (e.g., taking notes, analysis, coming up with big ideas, writing, research) or preferences (e.g., working alone, in groups, in partners; working in quiet or with conversation; novelty vs structure), and have them give three examples of what has worked well in terms of engagement in the past.

Your ideas:

Write or adapt an idea that you could use here

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Representation Representation is the what of learning. Representation is concerned with the ways that we

perceive and comprehend information. Representation is about the symbols, words,

shapes, and language structures that we use to convey information. Learners vary in the

ways we understand and process language and symbols for a number of reasons that are

related to culture, language, disability, and educational experience.

To adequately and accurately transfer information from one setting to the next, students

should engage in multimodal learning. If students are reading about CPR they should also

watch a video and try it out themselves. If students have to learn about implicit bias, they

should define the term, observe possible examples, and debate or discuss positive and

negative instances of the concept.

To support multiple means of representation, consider offering alternatives for each

modality and give students a choice as to which modality they would prefer while

encouraging coordinating information across modalities. Explicitly address vocabulary and

terminology, providing explicit practice so that terminology can be acquired and used

readily and appropriately. UDL principles hold that there should be transparency in the aims

of teaching and that holds true when it comes to the ways students learn and communicate.

Here are three ideas for supporting multiple means of Representation:

1. Have students conduct a concept interview. Students work independently or in

groups to identify 3 - 4 central concepts in the course/chapter/module and interview each other on the definitions and connected concepts, including a rationale for why those concepts are central.

2. Use shapes, colours, and words to draw relationships between concepts: to demonstrate hierarchies, overlaps, maps, and sequences. Rearrange the shapes and words to tap whether students understand how terms are related.

3. In presenting information, have students choose two modalities for that presentation and explain which modality suited them better and which one did a better job of conveying information. For example, which is better for learning to climb a ladder: written instructions or a video?

Your ideas:

Write or adapt an idea that you could use here

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Action & Expression Action and Expression is the how of learning. It prompts us to understand that students can

come to learning very differently and will think about, process, demonstrate, and synthesise

learning in different ways.

Learners differ in the ways they navigate learning environments, instructions, and

assignments. Learners also vary in their skills in various modes of expression of information

and also have specific preferences as to how they express their knowledge. We know that

some students love to prepare and write exams and some prefer to write papers.

The UDL framework pushes us to think beyond papers and exams, however and think

about demonstrating all or parts of our knowledge using speech, writing, building,

demonstrating through slide show, crafting, or assembling. It also supports executive

functions: the branch of cognition dedicated to organizing, planning, controlling our

attention, and monitoring progress. By giving students a sense of mastery over their

navigation and expression of learning, it permits them to develop monitoring, planning, and

organizing systems since they have autonomy over the process from start to finish and can

develop an internal locus of control over the production and expression of learning.

Three ideas for supporting multiple means of Action & Expression:

1. Implement a multimedia assignment for which students plan the content, layout,

and technology. Develop with students around ways of managing the project to support planning and execution.

2. Offer students the choice between writing a paper or illustrating a storyboard and have students analyse content in light of which mode of expression suits both their assignment and their preference.

3. Implement the use of assistive technology in class. Help students learn to use voice recorders, screen readers, or text-to-speech software to enhance their learning and demonstrate that by using many technology alternatives.

Your ideas:

Write or adapt an idea that you could use here

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The Overlaps Since cognition is complex, Engagement, Representation, and Action & Expression are not

discrete categories. Instead, they all tend to be interrelated. For example, while the concept

interview can serve to support representation of information, it provides a means of

expressing knowledge and negotiating meaning verbally. It also supports engagement by

giving students choice about how they want to thresh out concepts. Likewise, the Hotwash

activity supports engagement but also supports representation by compelling students to

condense and articulate key points. It also provides students with a goal or end point for the

lecture so that they can plan and coordinate pieces of information with that goal in mind.

UDL Myths Since UDL is a new framework that is being slowly implemented across different types of

school, learners, and districts, some myths are emerging as educators grapple with what

might be considered good UDL practice and what might not.

Myth 1: UDL is just good teaching

To address this myth, we need to have a sense of what good teaching is in the first place.

While an academic definition is probably vast and complicated, most of us can agree that

good teaching means that the instructor is passionate about their subject area, they take

time to model what to learn and how to learn well, they establish good personal

relationships with their students, they empathize communicate well, and creating the

conditions under which student acquire, retain and generalize their knowledge.

UDL is a design framework which means good teaching is imbedded in a process of design

thinking focused on creating expert learners. Good teaching can and does exist on its own

to produce positive, memorable educational outcomes. However, the UDL framework

suggest new ways of investigating learning experiences, to identify gaps and problems, to

provide multiple pathways (engagement, representation, action & expression) to the same

learning outcomes, and to test and revise design solutions to learning problems.

UDL complements good teaching with good design thinking.

Myth 2: UDL means that all curriculum has to be overhauled and redesigned

According to most UDL implementation practice, UDL is best implemented in baby steps.

UDL CAN mean an overhaul and a total redesign, but it doesn’t have to mean that.

Choose a single activity and start by offering two alternatives for expression. Start one class

with assessing engagement. Ask for student feedback on your lecture. At the same time,

ask them if they have preferences for activities other than lectures. Once you get

comfortable with small steps, move onto a bigger step. Experiment with one cell of the

framework. Try using visual and auditory materials for learning. Try asking students give a

summary of the major points in the class. UDL can be as big or small as you’d like; that is

the essence of design thinking. Think about a small change, design it, test it, get feedback,

change it and try again. Before you know it, your small steps add up to real change and you

will have officially become a Universal Design Thinker.

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Myth 3: UDL only benefits the student

Perhaps the most wonderful aspect of UDL is that it DOES benefit students, but instructors

time and again say that UDL gave them a way of enjoying teaching again. It takes the

pressure off of grading hundreds of repetitive assignments, it gives keys to increasing

engagement, and gives students autonomy over their learning. It frames up the classroom

as a community, shifts the power dynamics, supports feedback, and by and large, makes

expression of learning more creative and interesting.

UDL and Accommodation Planning Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Accommodation Planning share some similarities

but are essentially different concepts. Accommodation planning is mandated to ensure that

persons with disabilities have the right to access educational institutions. UDL can be a

mechanism in that process without focusing specifically on individual students with

disabilities, and instead, focusing on what would be maximally instructive for as many

students as possible.

You may begin to consider UDL framework in your classes in response to the

accommodation processes because

a. There are so many accommodation plans in your classes that it is difficult to provide

individualized attention to the students;

b. There are aspects of accommodation plans that are easy to implement without

needing to resort to specialized planning. For example, if you use UDL framework to

create audio recording for your lectures and provide options for exams, those are

accommodations that a student doesn’t need to seek for individualized planning.

This pyramid, developed by disability specialists at AHEAD (2017), illustrates the way that

we can think about UDL in relation to accommodation planning.

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At the bottom level, and as a general approach to teaching and learning in post-secondary

institutions, we can apply UDL principles that include the majority of students. As you learn

more about UDL, this means that as the instructor, you are considering the design of your

syllabus, the types of activities students undertake, whether you convey information in

multiple modalities (e.g., seeing, reading, listening, diagramming), and whether students

are provided choices and participation in their educational journey.

As we know, accessibility is featured as part of existing technology, UDL dives deep into

the way students learn. Where accessibility focuses on access, UDL focuses on becoming

an expert learner. While accessibility features serve to mitigate disability-related barriers,

UDL starts with variation in learners; the design of the learning environment may not even

see a disability label.

Below, accessibility and UDL are contrasted:

Accessibility Features (Reactive) Universal Design for Learning (Proactive)

• Wheelchair accessible desks

• Accessible documents

• Door opening buttons

• Ramps

• Closed captioning

• Screen readers

• Text to speech software

• Braille on signs

• Explicit learning outcomes

• Student and instructor feedback

• Building relationships

• Assessing engagement

• Self and peer assessment

• Guiding goal setting

• Providing choice

• Student-designed rubrics

• Represent information in multiple ways

By planning proactively and for as many students as possible, your workload around

individualization will be decreased. Students who experience disability-related barriers will

not only feel included but will be relieved of the additional work they would normally have to

undertake in the accommodation process.

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SECTION FOUR

Case Study #1 You are teaching a class on communication skills in law enforcement. The course is designed so that student read five chapters from a textbook and two articles. There are ten conflict and arrest simulations that students practice and complete with a partner. Grading is based on seven reading responses and adequate understanding of conflict and arrest simulations. Students tend to perform well on the reading responses but fare poorly on the simulations. Last semester, two students with self-disclosed anxiety disorders nearly failed the class. You feel that students are not readily prepared for strong communication in the field and you feel discouraged.

Apply Design Thinking and follow the steps below to analyse the case

Start small and concrete What are the problems? Is the type of reading? The number or type of simulations? The way they are related? Keep your starting points task-based (e.g., examine whether the simulations are related to the readings accurately).

Create clear goals What is the goal of your design? Clearer simulations? Fewer failures? Better self-assessment? Flexible communicators?

Assess engagement What do students want to know/build/develop? What are their expectation, strengths, and weaknesses? How can you support them in their opinion? How can they support each other?

Choose a starting point in the UDL Guidelines

How will you start the redesign? Will you start with the way information is presented and accessed? Will you start by designing for access to reading and comprehension? Or create multiple ways of demonstrating understanding of reading and relating that information to improve simulations?

Test and Get Feedback

Implement one aspect of the redesign (e.g., one simulation practiced in two different ways with self- and peer-reflection on a related reading). Test it, get feedback, as implement further changes if necessary. Remember that feedback from both yourself and students is key to knowing when your UDL is doing what you want it to do!

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Case Study #2 You are an instructor in the paramedic program. The topic that you dislike teaching the most is how to recognize and respond to signs of cardiac arrest. You find that while students can memorize the steps to recognize cardiac arrest, they aren’t able to think critically, and to plan a response in managing the public while attending to a patient. It would seem that students have a sense of “book learning”, but you never feel confident that they will perform well in a real-life situation.

Apply Design Thinking and follow the steps below to analyse the case

Start small and concrete What are the problems?

Create clear goals What is the goal of your design?

Assess engagement What do students want to know/build/develop?

Choose a starting point in the UDL Guidelines

How will you start the redesign?

Test and Get Feedback

Implement one aspect of the redesign. Test it, get feedback, as implement further changes if necessary.

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Resources

Centre for Applied Special Technology (CAST)

AHEAD Ireland

DO-IT University of Washington

Universal Design for Learning in BC

Design Thinking Bookleg at Stanford School of Design

References

Design Thinking Bookleg (2018). Hasso Plattener Institute of Design at Stanford

Goldsmith, S. (2007). Universal Design. Routledge.

Rose, L.T. (2016). The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values

Sameness. Toronto: Harper Collins.

Universal Design for Learning in BC: Legacy of the BC UDL project (2010). SET-BC.

Special Education Technology - British Columbia.

UDL & the Continuum of Support (2017, November 2). AHEAD. Retrieved April 22, 2020

https://www.ahead.ie/udl-pyramid